Ellen Vrana in Harper’s Magazine:
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek contains the kind of writing that emanates from a consciousness Erich Fromm called a “state of being.” This Pulitzer Prize-winning marvel of American writing, Annie Dillard (born April 30, 1945), gives us a spell-binding observation of nature and self at the most immediate, conscious level. “If the day is fine, any walk will do; it all looks good.” Dillard’s body, spirit, and mind go for a walk in Virginia’s old forests. Read more on the pleasures of walking in nature, literally and figuratively, in Thomas A. Clark’s prose poem “In Praise of Walking” and Andy Goldsworthy’s study of walls and their representation of our linear paths. Or jot over to my own compilation of the wonders of walking “The Importance of Walking About”. Dillard’s spirit spills abroad, unhitched to any double awareness that paralyzes the human mind. She exists, walks, sees, and writes.
The originality of Annie Dillard’s work from 1974 owes to how much she understood that being in nature meant relinquishing our daily self-directed focus to listen and heed acts of grace. “It’s a matter of keeping my eyes open,” writes Dillard. With this intensity and close focus, there is a wonderful celebration of the small and the individual. Insects, as they go about their complex familiar lives, can easily require hours of observation. Read more in Gerald Durrell’s tales of childhood nature adventures. Dillard reminds us “If I can’t see these minutiae, I still try to keep my eyes open.”
The mockingbird took a single step into the air and dropped. His wings were still folded against his sides as though he were singing from a limb and not falling, accelerating thirty-two feet per second per second, through the empty air. Just a breath before he would have been dashed to the ground, he unfurled his wings with exact, deliberate care, revealing the broad bars of white.
I had just rounded a corner when his insouciant step caught my eye; no one else was in sight. The fact of his free fall was like the old philosophical conundrum about the tree that falls in the forest. The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.
More here.
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